About that risk analysis …

In an effort to regenerate Pacific salmon stocks, American entrepreneur Russ George took it upon himself last year to dump 100 tons of iron sulphate into the ocean off Canada. Subsequent satellite imagery indicated he was successful in triggering a massive bloom of plankton, a major food source for the fish, but the long-term consequences remain a mystery.

As the World Economic Forum study shows us, some risk surveys are less 'robust' than others/CREDIT: ccal.org

This unsanctioned and controversial action is known broadly as geoengineering; obscure though it was, the incident didn’t escape the notice of the World Economic Forum. The 42-year-old Swiss nonprofit is dedicated to improving world business climates through networking with national and industry leaders. For the past eight years, the WEF has issued Global Risk Reports that identify real, emerging and potential challenges to sustainability. The 2013 report, according to WEF managing director Lee Howell of the Risk Response Network, harvested the opinions of “more than 1,000 experts,” which make “this report more textured and robust than ever.” In addition to its partnerships with the National University of Singapore and the University of Oxford, the WEF also worked with the journal of Nature “to push the boundaries of the imagination further with a revamped ‘X Factors’ section.”

And it’s in this “X Factors” section where we find some compelling scenarios on the horizon, such as “rogue deployment of geoengineering,” where a desperate country, or even a deranged Dr. Evil, might attempt to adjust the planetary thermostat by seeding the stratosphere with tons of sulfur injection, for as little as $1-$2 billion a year. The “X Factors” chapter provides an intriguing read that references four other potential game-changers, including the discovery of alien life.

Unfortunately, the latter discussion is brief, superficial, and inspired by the rapidly accelerating detection of extrasolar planets. It states only that the confirmation of ET life on distant worlds could have “profound psychological and philosophical implications” with the “largest near-term impact … on science itself.”

The conceit here is that by working with the authorities at Nature, the WEF has really Thought Outside The Box and ladled out some innovative brain food. But that’s rubbish, of course. If the WEF wanted to present itself as something other than an intellectual housecat, it would’ve cited an essay published in the August 2008 Political Theory journal.

Titled “Sovereignty and the UFO” by Ohio State professor Alexander Wendt and University of Minnesota professor Raymond Duvall, this critique notes how “over 100,000 UFOs have been reported worldwise, many by militaries … (but) no state has actually looked for UFOs to discover larger patterns.”

The irony of the Wendt/Duvall analysis is that it actually buttresses the WEF’s call to arms about promoting a united front against futuristic threats to global stability:

“The physical threat, of course, is that ET presence in ‘our’ solar system would indicate a vastly superior technology to human beings’, raising the possibility of conquest and even extermination. (In this respect it matters greatly that They might be Here, rather than far away as in the SETI scenario.) The ontological threat is that even if the ETs were benign, their confirmed presence would create tremendous pressure for a unified human response, or world government. The sovereign identity of the modern state is partly constituted in and through its difference from other such states, which gives modern sovereignty its plural character. Any exteriority that required subsuming this difference into a global sovereignty would threaten what the modern state is, quite apart from the risk of physical destruction.”

So here we sit, in 2013, with tens of thousands of logged encounters with the enigmatic global UFO phenomenon. But the WEF directs our attention to an arm’s-length search for life amid the distant stars. Since the WEF folks are thorough and informed enough to alert us to a single case of rogue geoengineering, the omission of UFOs from the discussion would appear to be a conscious decision. So De Void will give Wendt and Duvall, who have effectively called their bluff about projecting solidarity against a threat without borders, the last word:

“… Taking UFOs seriously would certainly embody the spirit of self-criticism that infuses liberal governmentality and academia in particular, and it would, thereby, foster critical theory. And indeed, if academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth, then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb is all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.”